Music

The Rolling Stones guitarist was born in 1943 in Dartford, Kent. He celebrates his 81st birthday

Rather than going over his biography again, or the long list of his antics, why not point out a few things that are probably less well known?

This great collector of guitars owns around 3,000 of them. He doesn't keep them all in his bedroom.... In an interview with the specialist magazine Guitar World in 1986, he declared: “Whatever the model, give me five or ten minutes and I'll make them all sound the same.” This doesn't prevent him from devoting a special cult following to Clarence Leonidas Fender, founding father of the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation in 1946.

While the sticky old blues and rock of yesteryear still find a place in his heart, his very first solo 45t in 1978 featured two tracks: “Run Rudolph Run”, a vitamin-packed Christmas song originally performed by Chuck Berry in 1958 (yes, yes!) and a reggae peice “The Harder They Come” written by Jamaican Jimmy Cliff in 1972 (and covered countless times since). This single was released on the band's own label, aptly named... Rolling Stones Records!

That same year, 1978, he played guitar and produced “Bush Doctor” by Peter Tosh, one of the Wailers' mainstays and one-time accompanist to Bob Marley. As far as I can remember, the album was adorned with a sticker: a cannabis leaf which, when scratched, gave off the smell of ganja!

Last time I checked, Keith still owns a house in Jamaica, in Steel Town, the “capital” of the Rastas. The guitarist fell in love with the island when the Stones recorded part of their “Goats Head Soup” album there in 1973. And he certainly wasn't insensitive to the quality of certain specific leafy greens!

In 1979, he told the American magazine Rolling Stone: “I'm attracted to reggae because there's nothing going on in black American music today. It's going through the disco phase. It's very popular and it's not surprising that it attracts a big audience (...) Reggae has taken off because there are now more Jamaicans in Britain and America than in Jamaica! The problem is, I don't know if people want to hear me play roots reggae!”

And indeed, while he has lent his six-string or his production talents to Max Romeo, Black Uhuru, Toots & The Maytals and even Ziggy Marley, we're still waiting for his personal album devoted to the genre.

Even more surprisingly, during the Rolling Stones' last visit to Brussels in July 2022, Keith Richards gave an interview to the Flemish daily De Morgen in which he confessed a real interest in the graphic arts, but more specifically in Tintin and the world of Hergé. On stage at the Stade Roi Baudouin, in a nod to the local audience, he sported a yellow tie with Captain Haddock's face on his left leg (see illustration in article)!

(AK - Phoro : © Etienne Tordoir)

Photo: Mick Jagger (left) and Keith Richards (right) with the Rolling Stones at the Stade Roi Baudouin in Brussels (Belgium) on July 14, 2022.